skip to Main Content

The Sum and Then Some

“Everyone has a purpose in life and a unique talent to give to others.  And when we blend this unique talent with service to others, we experience the ecstasy and exultation of our own spirit, which is the ultimate goal of all goals.” – Kallam Anji Reddy

Our own unique gifts, plus service, equals ecstasy and exultation.  A recipe for fulfillment, bliss as a mathematical equation — sounds good to me.  This plus this equals bliss.  Your heart plus its connection to other hearts equals EVERYTHING.   

The trick, at least in my own life right now, I’m discovering, is that this often involves an uncomfortable degree of surrender… 

My preference of course is to focus on the half of the equation that I can control, the part where I get to share my passions courageously, the promise that if I express myself authentically, the world will be ready to receive the gift that I am with open arms! 

While this is certainly an essential component of personal fulfillment, the other half of the equation is SERVICE.  Now, service sounds great as long as it’s on my terms and on my schedule and fits with my plans.  Darn it, though, wouldn’t you know, it rarely works that way.  In fact, it’s kinda the opposite.  Real service doesn’t allow us to remain contained and controlling and small.  What it tends to do, rather, is challenge every limited idea we might have of ourselves.  And the greater our concept of service, the more likely we are to be blasted into a trillion radiant bits.

I keep encountering, in meditation and visioning and through the lessons of circumstance, a call to submission, surrender, and service.  This is very challenging for a control-freak like me.  (Which, duh, is probably why I keep receiving the message).  Over and over, it’s like Life is saying, “Surrender, have faith, plunge all-in face-first and open-hearted whether or not there appears to be any sort of safety net…”

Okay, then.  The question then becomes:  to what am I being called to submit?  I think this is probably a worthwhile inquiry for most of us:  to what are we surrendering?  To what are we in service? 

The good news is that we get to name this and claim it for ourselves.  Ultimately, we’re all in service to the Infinite, so we’ve got an infinite number of angles from to approach it.   And we get to choose.

I’ve noticed how heavy and frustrating and yucky it feels when when I stick myself in a shadowy corner submitting to things like just-getting-by, proving-myself, comparison-to-others, worry, outrage, separation, and regret.  And how liberating it is to recognize that we can just as easily choose instead to serve Justice, Love, Beauty, Peace, Plenty, and Music, and Fun.  When we submit-surrender-serve Divine Ideas, everything we do becomes a part of the glory and majesty of it all.  Our own majesty and might is revealed.

And that’s what it’s all about, it seems to me, in the end.  As we freely share ourselves in service we experience being a part of something greater.  We actually create the greater something of which we’re a part.  And the Whole that we’re creating together is greater than the sum of Its parts — it’s the sum and then some.  It’s every individual and the relationships between us, the luminous web of infinite kaleidoscopic connections — the unfathomable totality-plus that I call “God.”

Let’s serve that, together.   Let’s serve that up, together.  Let’s be that, together.

I can’t wait to see you.  XO, Drew

© 2018 Drew Groves

Back To Top